| JohnDixson |
16th June 2025 20:40 |
Thank you all for the good wishes. I’ve been blessed along the way by examples from friends who showed the way.
The very first example occurred just prior to my first flight out of flight school. The prelude: I had driven from Ft. Rucker to the Pentagon while in school attempting to get orders to the Aviation Test Board and was successful in that assignment.
The first flight was scheduled with a CW-3 IP and we met and reviewed the flight before signing out in the second floor office in a large hangar at Cairns. It was to be in a new UH-1D-so new it had the 44 ft rotor from the UH-1B. I opened the door to go down the exterior stairway and the IP who was almost twice my age stopped me, pointing to a Spec 5 trotting across the tarmac toward a parked Ch-21C. Had a box under his arm.
My IP asked me if I saw him, pointing directly down at him. Responded that I did, wondering where this conversation was going. The CW-3 says “ Look, anyone can train up and fly these damn things, but that man down there, he is the reason the whole operation works-never forget that. That short lesson served very well in the Army and Sikorsky. As well as not being averse to asking people who knew, and listening.
One day right after starting at Sikorsky I was flying a CH-53A production aircraft-had been to our ground school and had flown the 53 enough to get very comfortable, but the information in the flight manual and ground school about how the Cruise Guide system worked was anything but clear and I mentioned it to one of the very senior guys. he told me “ oh-there’s a guy in engineering who had a lot to do with that ….wait a minute…here is his extension, he’ll be glad to talk to you. So I did that and a guy named Ralph Lightfoot picked up the phone. I identified myself and stated the difficulty I had and this man gave me a terrific detailed short description, answered some follow up questions until I thanked him for the information and hung up. Then I thanked the pilot who had provided the number. He says “ well who answered the phone?”. Told him Ralph Lightfoot was his name. He says “ you know who that is? Answered No. My friend says “Ralph Lightfoot is the VP Engineering.”. Guess I learned more than one lesson that day.
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